Book Suggests Work Doesn't Harm Teenagers' Studies

It's a
question educators and parents often ask: Is it a good idea for high
school students to work at a fast-food joint or clothing store after
school? Is that a wise use of teenagers' time during such formative and
demanding years?

University of Minnesota researcher Jeylan T. Mortimer has gone to
great lengths to examine the issue. She and her colleagues have tracked
some former high-schoolers in St. Paul since they entered 9th grade in
1987. Drawing largely on that research, her new book, Working and
Growing Up in America, provides a detailed look at teenagers' paid
work experiences and the ripple effects on their lives.

Part-time work during adolescence—as long as the hours are not
excessive—doesn't harm students' grades, she argues, and can
offer some real benefits. Those pluses include acquiring work and
social skills, and even enjoying enhanced academic success later in
life.

Ms. Mortimer, a sociologist, is the principal investigator on the
Youth Development Study, which has kept up with some 1,000 randomly
selected people since they entered high school. Data have been
collected by annually surveying the young people, and parents were
questioned twice during their children's high school years.

While the research is ongoing, the book, published this month by
Harvard University Press, taps into the material available through
1998, seven years after the students graduated from high
school.

Continuing Debate

Stephen F. Hamilton, a professor of human development at Cornell
University in Ithaca, N.Y., suggests that the book draws on some rich
research.

"I don't know of any other study that has followed the same group of
young people for anything like this amount of time with a special focus
on their work experience and how that fits into the other things that
they're doing," he said.

Among other issues, Ms. Mortimer weighs in on the long-standing
debate over whether employment exacts an academic price from students.
She relied on students' reported grades, as well as questionnaires from
parents.

"[W]e found no evidence that working either promotes or interferes
with school performance," she writes.

Much of the controversy over youth employment, she adds, "rests on a
largely untested assumption: that work competes for teenagers' time
with more beneficial activities."

She tested that assumption in St. Paul, and didn't find it very
persuasive. "[E]mployment does not necessarily squeeze out the
productive activities of homework, extracurricular involvements, and
family work," she writes. "Indeed, the vast majority of employed youth
do not sacrifice these activities."

Thanks to the longitudinal nature of the St. Paul study, Ms.
Mortimer was able to probe the academic effects of teenage work over
the longer term. She found that teenagers who worked moderate hours
during high school benefited later.

"Most important," she writes, "those who were 'steady' workers
during high school, employed almost all months of observation but
working less than 20 hours per week, had pronounced educational
success, especially with respect to four-year college degrees."

The benefits appeared particularly strong, she found, for students
who appeared to have had relatively low educational promise when they
entered high school.

Mr. Hamilton from Cornell said there is general agreement among
researchers that too much work—generally more than 20 hours a
week during the school year—is a bad idea. But he said Ms.
Mortimer's emphasis on combining moderate hours with "steady"
employment offers a new twist.

"Young people who work in that pattern do better than those who work
more ... and those who don't work," Mr. Hamilton said. "And that's
something we didn't know before she did this work."

The book suggests that teenagers who are employed during high school
may even have an advantage in finding career-relevant work later. And
it probes some of the harder-to-quantify impacts of work.

When they were high school juniors, most students in the study
agreed that their jobs helped them learn to take responsibility for
their work. Many also reported learning how to manage money, how to be
on time, and how to get along with others.

In an interview, Ms. Mortimer argued that a key contribution of her
research is that it examines variations in the quality of work
experiences young people have.

"One has to consider many things about the work experience," she
said. "It's not sufficient to know just how many hours an adolescent is
working."

She looked, for instance, at the learning opportunities afforded at
jobs, the stresses on young workers, and their relationships with
co-workers.

Laurence Steinberg, a psychologist at Temple University in
Philadelphia, said he agrees with Ms. Mortimer on some points, such as
the notion that the quality of students' jobs is important to
consider.

But he believes beneficial jobs for teenagers are scarce. He
co-wrote an influential book in the 1980s, When Teenagers Work: The
Social and Psychological Costs of Teenage Employment, that offered
a sharp critique of the practice.

Mr. Steinberg cautioned that he had not read Ms. Mortimer's book,
but was generally familiar with her research in St. Paul.

'Compared to What?'

"I think where we disagree is that her optimism about the benefits
of work focuses on the experiences kids have in good jobs," he said.
"And my skepticism about the benefits of work is based on the
observation that very few kids actually have those kinds of jobs."

There is a "bigger issue" behind the debate, Mr. Steinberg argued,
noting that American students work far more hours than teenagers in
many other countries.

"Maybe the reason that you don't see much effect on grades is that
our schools don't demand very much of kids," he said.

The fundamental question to consider when discussing whether
students ought to work, he argued, is: "Compared to what?"

"I can think of a lot of things I'd rather have kids do than
wrapping hamburgers," he said. "But if the alternative is getting high
or stumbling around shopping malls, then I'd rather have them wrapping
hamburgers."

But Ms. Mortimer maintains that even fast-food jobs often hold some
value.

"We might look upon youth jobs, from an adult point of view, as
menial," she said. "But from the point of view of the novice worker,
this job might provide an opportunity to kind of test out how you
perform ... whether you can operate in a work environment."

Jobs teach young people how to manage their time and get along with
other people, she argues.

Benjamin D. Jennell, a senior at Pentucket Regional High School in
West Newbury, Mass., works at a farm every Saturday. He does everything
from delivering hay shavings and fertilizer to plowing snow.

"I like it because it's outdoors—it's fun," he said. "It's
never the same thing every day."

He said the work hours don't interfere with schoolwork or other
pursuits. Before he took the job, he worked for about a year at a
restaurant busing tables. He was far less keen on that job, largely
because it became monotonous.

"It was the same thing [every day]," he said. "There was no change
in it."

Ms. Mortimer suggests that switching jobs during high school is
probably a good idea.

"When we ask, 'What job is better than another job?,' the answer to
that question changes as young people grow older," she said. "Just
sticking with the first job may not be the best strategy."

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